SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL LEADERS

As a leader, you need to realize that your leadership life does not simply happen. Successful leadership is a progressive step that you design cautiously with time. The choices are yours after all! You choose success or failure, the answer lies squarely on you as a leader. Just note that every situation, every moment, offers a new leadership choice in life. And by doing so, offers you a good opportunity of doing things differently hence producing more successful positive results in return.

The principles of highly successful leaders may be applied in life generally. They are not restricted to leadership, management, or workplaces. These 7 habits in discussion here can help people change, grow, and become more successful in any other human responsibility aspect you might imagine.

Be inspired by these leadership habits nevertheless. They are very wonderful. Here is a summary of the seven habits of highly successful leaders you may want to explore and apply in your day to day operations.

Habit 1: Be proactive

Being proactive is the capacity to govern one’s situation, rather than having it govern you. Successful leaders are expected to be proactive, rather than being reactive to situations. One’s Self-determination, power, and choice to make decision response to circumstances, stimulus, and conditions.

Habit 2: Begin with end in mind (Personal leadership)

This may also be referred to as the personal leadership habit. It simply means leading oneself towards your aims. Habit 2 is purely based on imagination- that is the ability to predict in your mind what you are incapable of seeing or visualize with your eyes. This habit was founded on the norm that all things are made twice. There is the first (mental) creation and the second (physical) creation.

In case you fail to make a conscious energy to visualize what you want and who you are in life or in your carrier, then you strengthen circumstances and other people to define you and your life. By developing the culture of concentrating only on relevant events you will develop a solid platform to avoid unnecessary distractions and achieve productive and successful leadership in live.

Habit 3: Place first things first (Personal Management)

This is also known as the personal management habit. Habit 3 is all about life management! It revolves around your values, priorities, roles, and purpose.

This habit involves organizing and implementing your activities in line with your personal priorities as established in habit 2 above. Habit 2 is the mental (first) creation; while habit 3 is the physical (second) creation.

Habit 4: Think win-win (interpersonal leadership habit)

This is referred to as interpersonal leadership habit. This habit is very essential because your achievements are generally reliant on on your co-operative efforts with colleagues. This habit is not about playing nice, neither is it a quick-fix method. Think win-win habit is basically a personality-based code for human collaboration and interaction.

This habit perceives life as co-operative arena, than competitive. It is a heart and mind frame that seeks mutual benefit constantly in every human interaction. Win-win simply means solutions or agreements that are mutually satisfying and beneficial.

A leader who approaches conflicts with a win-win approach possesses three important character traits including integrity, maturity, and abundance mentality (believing that there is enough for everyone).

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Communication habit)

Communication is the key vital skill in one’s life. You spend years just learning how to speak, write and read. But how do you learn about listening? Do you have any training that enables you to listen? Probably none, right?

Most people or leaders seek first to be understood in order to get their point across. By adopting this, you may end up ignoring your colleagues completely, pretend you are listening, hear selectively, or focus only on words being said attentively, but entirely miss the meaning.

Because people often listen autobiographically, they tend to respond back in one of the following ways.

Evaluating: judging then you either agreeing or disagreeing

Probing: Asking questions from your own reference or frame

Advising: Giving counsel, solution, and advice to a problem

Interpreting: Analyzing others behaviors and motives based on your experience.

Habit 6: Synergize (Creative Co-operation habit)

Synergy simply means “two heads are better than one.” This habit therefore implies that whole is greater than sum of its fragments, which implicitly positions the challenge to see the potential and good in one’s contribution.

Synergize is the habit of creative co-operation. It involves open-mindedness, teamwork, and the quest of finding new solutions to your old challenges. Synergy enables leaders discover jointly things they are unlikely to discover by themselves.

Habit 7: Sharpen the saw (Self-renewal habit)

Also referred as the habit of self-renewal, sharpen the saw simply means enhancing and preserving your greatest asset. It means you need to have a balanced program in your physical, emotional/social, spiritual, and mental life for self-renewal. For instance:

Physical: Beneficial exercising, resting and eating

Emotional/Social: Making meaningful and social connections with others

While renewing yourself in these four areas mentioned, you create change and growth in your day to day life. Sharpen the Saw habit helps in keeping you fresh so that you can continue practicing all the other preceding six habits. You advance your capacity to handle and produce the challenges that comes your way.